When Microsoft's David Hufford said that the ideal price for a console was a buck below US$ 200, he never thought that one of Taiwan's biggest hardware manufacturing moguls could match that price... on a laptop.

Introduced at the 2007 Computex showcase, the wee (yes pronounced "wii") ASUS EeePC 701 caught the eyes of many a techie not because of its size, but because of its starting price.

The product manager at the ASUS booth also revealed that each laptop would come pre-installed with a flavor of Linux, although the demo product was seen to have performed well with Windows XP. Users still hooked to Microsoft's OS will be given XP driver support, however.

SSD support now expands to 32 GB, while the manager hinted at a possible 3G module that would either be attachable as a dongle or built-in to the final model. A separate version of the "English speaking countries" has been estimated to be available as soon as August, but that remains to be seen. Engadget, however, eyed the demo unit in perfect, near-completion condition and speculates that the ETA could become a near-distinct possibility.

EeePC 701 Specification

• Display： 7 inches
  
• CPU & Chipset: Intel mobile CPU and Intel chipset
• OS: Linux/ Microsoft Windows XP compatible
• Communication: 10/100 Mbps Ethernet; 56K modem
• WLAN: WiFi 802.11b/g
• Graphic: Intel Unified Memory Architecture graphics solution
  
• Memory: 512MB, DDR2-400
• Storage: 4/ 8/ 16GB Flash
• Webcam: 300K-pixel video camera
• Audio: Hi-Definition Audio CODEC; Built-in stereo speaker; Built-in microphone
• Battery Life: 3hrs (4 cells: 5200mAh, 2S2P)
• Dimension & Weight: 22.5 x 16.5 x 2.1~3.5cm, 0.89kg